


A Thousand Shades of Red

by nekare



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekare/pseuds/nekare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up is hard. Sam knows it, can feel it beneath his skin as his bones stretch and his baby fat fades and he’s perpetually hungry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Shades of Red

Growing up is hard. Sam knows it, can feel it beneath his skin as his bones stretch and his baby fat fades and he’s perpetually hungry.

 _Adolescence_ , he reads in an encyclopedia in a public library in Michigan, and there they are, his symptoms, in glossy paper and tiny font.

A part of him is glad he at least has something in common with his classmates, those kids with normal parents with normal jobs and normal mortgages. The other, more cynical part of him, just thinks it plain sucks.

 

\----

 

Sam learns to drive when he’s fourteen, while Dad is out hunting and just after his first girlfriend breaks up with him. He’s sitting on the porch stairs, drawing circles in the dirt with his sneaker and scowling at everything that happens to cross his path, when Dean takes pity on him.

“Get up, kiddo,” Dean says, crooked smile, but worried eyes. “It’s time for you to learn how to treat a real lady.”

It’s spring in Texas, but it feels like summer when Sam finally manages to keep the car steady in one lane, when he grins at Dean sitting next to him and Dean grins back for a moment, and then goes back to complaining about how much Sam’s hurting his baby. The Impala has been his for three months already, but the high doesn’t seem to wear off of him, keeps him sated and bright.

Dean swats him on the head when he starts going faster, leaving Sam’s stomach and heart and possibly his brains somewhere on the road behind them. “Now don’t you get cocky,” Dean says, and Sam laughs.

Dean rolls his window down, looks at the landscape going past them and he looks peaceful, content. It suits him just as much as it doesn’t, because Dean is always movement in Sam’s mind, energy and restlessness.

Sam turns on the radio, changes stations until he settles on Nirvana, turns up the volume. Dean frowns, moves to switch on a tape, but Sam swats his hand away. “Driver picks the music, Dean,” he says. Dean laughs and smacks him on the head but stays put.

They spend the evening driving around until they’re almost out of gas, Dean instructing him all the way. When he finally parks outside their dingy place on the outskirts of town, Sam gets out of the car with his knees weak and a smile on his face.

Dean pats him on the back, says, “You did well, Sammy,” and Sam can feel the remains of the child he once was, the one that thought Dean was the coolest big brother ever, come back to life, a bit, and feed on the attention.

“Feeling better, then? We’re leaving soon anyway, Sammy, it’s probably for the best if you don’t get too attached,” Dean says, ruffling Sam’s hair, and Sam can feel his stomach clench and his mouth tighten, the joy sucked out of him.

He jerks away from Dean’s hand, walks away and slams the front door on his way to his room. He looks out his window once he’s there, and sees Dean standing in the same place, running a hand through his hair. He looks tired, all of a sudden, and Sam knows he’s to blame but he doesn’t particularly care at the moment.

He lies on his bed, stares up at the ceiling and tries to convince himself that there are not a million lives ahead of him that he’s only going to walk out of eventually.

He doesn’t quite succeed.

 

\----

 

Sixteen years old and Sam struggles to remember the names of his classmates – they move too much, too often, and he hasn’t spent an entire semester in a single school in two years.

And yet, he always fits in. He’s grown up learning to lie like the best of them, and it’s just a matter of molding himself to people, knowing the proper jokes to tell and the right story to make people feel for him but not so much that they’ll get invested. There are only a handful of people he’s felt completely comfortable with, and Dean is at the top of that list. The thought both comforts him and terrifies him.

 

\----

 

Dean wakes him up at five, with a glass of water to the face when he’s at his most annoying. “Good morning, sunshine,” he says, and Sam groans, gives him the finger and buries his face in his pillow as Dean chuckles right before leaving the room.

They run six miles before breakfast, breathing in tune and finally alongside each other now that Sam is taller than Dean. 6’1 and still growing, and Sam knows he could outrun Dean now if he wanted to. He doesn’t, though.

Sam has spent his entire life trying to catch up to Dean.

They shove at each other, trying to trip the other one, and they laugh together as the sun comes up and burns their eyes.

After that, it’s push-ups and sit-ups and sparring, sometimes supervised by their father. They lie in the dirt afterwards, shoulders touching and breathing hard, and stay silent. They’re in Arizona, and the sky is perpetually cloudless, bright blue against the red earth. They communicate in grunts and pants, in those moments, but they never understand each other better than they do then.

Dean goes back to bed after they eat their Lucky Charms while standing up in the kitchen (“Breakfast of champions,” Dean says), and Sam runs to catch his school bus. Sometimes, when Dad’s between hunts and Dean’s between odd jobs, Dean will still be asleep when Sam’s back from school, usually dozing on the couch, and Sam will toss his bag on top of him and say “Fuck you,” before going to the fridge and drinking juice straight from the carton.

Dean _oof_ s lightly, but then he laughs, rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “You’re just jealous I’m already a mature adult and can sleep as much as I want,” he says, bright smile as he changes the channel in a hopeless and never ending search for porn.

Sam snorts, throws himself on the couch next to Dean. “Yeah, because you’re so mature, Dean.”

They fight for the remote. Sam wins, and settles on a documentary on gazelles just to annoy Dean.

He goes to sleep like that, some days. When he wakes up, face pressed against Dean’s shoulder and drooling on his shirt, right before Dean starts mocking him for it, there’s a hazy, dreamy moment between sleep and full awareness, in which Sam’s the warmest in the places where he and Dean touch, and he’s convinced things will get better.

They never last, those moments, but Sam wishes they would.

 

\----

 

Dad wants to go hunt a banshee. Sam refuses. He has a math exam the next morning, and he can’t afford to miss it.

His father calls him selfish. Sam says, _Right back at you._

In the end, Dad drives away, slamming the door on his way out, and Sam is so furious he’s shaking. Dean is caught in the middle, just like always. He leaves too, for a while, goes out to blow off some steam and comes back smelling like gunpowder. Shooting relaxes him in a way that should probably be scary, but Sam accepts it as just another Dean thing, completely natural for him.

It’s not even seven when he gets back, but Dean takes his babysitting duties seriously. He brings back dinner, almost apologetically, and they eat Chinese while sitting against the headboard of their bed, bare feet brushing together every now and then. They watch an ER rerun, but neither of them pays much attention to it.

Dean bumps shoulders with him, mouth full of chow mein, and Sam can feel the anger leave him. He feels oddly empty without it. He seems to be perpetually furious these days, the kind of anger that makes his stomach clench and teeth grind.

Dean changes the channel. “Check it out, dude, Pamela Anderson’s boobs,” he says, and Sam smiles in spite of himself.

They’re staying in a motel this month. Sam hates them because motels only come in two categories; horrible and godawful. There’s no familiarity in motels, no uniqueness other than this week’s awful décor. Sam likes it better when they rent houses, no matter how dingy they are, because they at least look lived-in, come with a certain trick to unlock the door and initials carved in desks and dodgy, suspicious things growing in the fridge. Sam likes to lie on his bed and stare at the fluorescent stickers someone stuck on the ceiling in a fit of puberty, likes to feel part of _something_. This particular motel only has a mold stain in the shape of England on the shower curtain to distinguish itself from the other thousand dumps Sam’s lived in.

He goes back to studying after eating, but he’s suddenly drowsy and achingly tired, and he can’t seem to concentrate. His bones hurt, and he figures another growth spur is coming.

Want any help?” Dean asks after a while.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and it sounds like a concession.

Dean’s always been better than him at math. Sam has a good head for facts, can remember history with the same ease he remembers pagan rituals to call the dead, but numbers he struggles with.

Half an hour later and he’s doing much better, even if Dean teases him for not being able to grasp such easy shit.

“You should cut Dad some slack, Sammy,” Dean says once they’re done with the last problem, suddenly serious. “He’s doing his best.”

Sam snorts. “No he’s not. If he was doing his best he’d be here, and we’d be having dinner at a real table, in a real house, instead of being out there trying to get himself killed.”

Dean sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose. “You’re too hard on him, man.”

“And you go too easy on him. _You’re_ the one that’s here, Dean, helping me with my homework and making sure I eat my vegetables. _You_.”

Dean blushes a bit, uncomfortable with the attention, and once more Sam curses his father for having broken his brother into such small pieces.

Even with a free bed, they sleep on the same one out of habit. They kick each other’s feet away, a nightly ritual they’ve been following for more than a decade. Sam wakes up to Dean’s fingers clutching the hem of Sam’s t-shirt, as if he’s trying to ground him there.

Sam both hates and loves the gesture, so familiar like breathing.

Dad comes back three days later, and doesn’t comment on the A Sam gets in math.

Dean gives him a VHS copy of Naughty Nurses IV in congratulations.

 

\----

“I’m concerned, Sam,” says Sam’s school counselor. She’s middle aged, with oversized glasses and her nails are painted pale pink. Her roots are showing. Sam has had this conversation at least twenty times already.

“Straight As, a clean record, not a single complaint, you’re quite the model student, Sam,” she continues. There’s a but coming, Sam can feel it. There’s always a but.

“But all of this moving around – it can’t be good for you.” She shuffles her papers around, drags her glasses higher on her nose. “Half a dozen different schools in a year alone-”

“My dad’s job requires him to move a lot,” Sam cuts in, the lie coming out easily. He knows the story by heart. He’s known it since he was six. He must have come off as callous, though, because the counselor purses her lips.

“I’ve heard reports that you sometimes come into school with bruises,” she says, and Sam knows this is the real reason he was called here. She takes off her glasses, fiddles with them nervously. “Is there something you want to tell me, Sam?”

The story should go, _It’s nothing, I’m really clumsy._ What comes out of his mouth is, “It’s nothing, just got into a fight with my brother, Dean,” and he’s not sure what makes him say the truth.

The fight had been bitter, about Dad’s parental skills, or lack thereof in Sam’s eyes. They had been sparring, and they’d conveniently forgotten to pull their punches like they usually would. Dean is just as bruised as he is. The rest of Sam’s bruises are from a poltergeist two weeks ago, but those aren’t the ones that stick in his mind.

“I see. And this brother of yours, does he hit you a lot?” the woman says, looking worried and failing at concealing it, and Sam bursts out laughing. It doesn’t seem to be the reaction the counselor was expecting.

“I’m fine, okay? I really am,” he says once he stops laughing for long enough. “There’s nothing going on at home, just a fight about the last Dorito that went too far.”

She bites her lip. “You know you don’t have to keep quiet, don't you, Sam? You’re only a phone call away from help.”

Sam hates the way she keeps calling him by his name every other sentence. It’s a cheap trick to get him to think he matters to her, that she _knows_ him. But you don’t con a conman. “I know, yeah, but I really am okay.”

She’s not buying it, but they’re moving again in a couple of weeks, and for once Sam won’t mind it that much. They’ve had a couple of close calls with Social Services already. “All right, Sam. If you say so. I just want you to know that you have options, a bright kid like you. You can get out.”

She hands him college pamphlets, and then he’s really listening.

\----

 

In March, Sam sleeps with Dean’s girlfriend.

Jen is tall and a natural redhead – hair so bright and orange that she can be seen from miles away. Her fringe is too long, and she continuously blows it off her face. She’s twenty-one, older than Dean, even. She’s taking a semester off from college, says money ran out and it was too late into the semester to ask for another loan. She makes Sam smile, blush whenever she’s around, and she makes Dean softer – the model boyfriend for the first time in his life.

They’re sharing a bedroom this time, and Dean makes Sam sleep on the couch whenever Jen stays over. Sam lies there, awake, listening to his brother grunt and Jen sigh. It makes him so mad he clutches at his sheets and grits his teeth and makes a hole in the upholstery from scratching at it so much.

He knows the moment Dean falls asleep because Jen pads over to the kitchen, barefoot, and drinks a glass of water. On the third night, Sam calls out, says, “Can’t sleep?” real quiet, and she almost drops the glass.

She smiles as she answers – she’s always smiling, it’s a quirk of hers. “Sam – you startled me. Not really, no, can’t go to sleep without some water first, ever since I was little.”

She’s only wearing panties and an old sweatshirt Sam knows belongs to Dean, but she still lingers, talks to him for a while, and she’s actually really nice, and easy to talk to. The next night she stays over she goes to the kitchen as well, and from then on it’s routine, whispered conversations over warm milk and even some chocolate cake she made herself that one time – it wasn’t very good, tasted like dirt, actually, but he still had two servings.

He tells her about college and how he’s already studying for the SATs, something he hasn’t told anyone yet. She encourages him, tells him he could make the Ivy League, with his grades, and gives him tips even if he won’t be doing the test for at least another year.

He kisses her one day, on impulse, leaning over the counter, and she stares for a moment. It’s the first time she’s not smiling since he met her. He bites his lip, apology on the tip of his tongue, but she pulls him closer, kisses him back.

They fuck on the couch, with Dean in the other room. It’s intoxicating. She puts a hand over his mouth so he won’t wake Dean up with his moans, half words and half breathless sounds, and she giggles at the way he keeps trying to bite her lightly on the palm of her hand.

Sam feels high on adrenaline as he moves inside her, as her hair tickles his nose. She smells like sage and sex and Dean, and the idea nearly makes him come, knowing Dean had been touching her like this just an hour ago, how he had sucked on her neck the same way Sam is now.

When she comes, clenched around him, Sam can’t help but moan, and Dean lets out a snore, loud, and just like that Sam tips over the edge.

Afterwards, Jen puts the sweatshirt on again and lies beside Sam on the couch, toes brushing together and breaths mingling, but it feels almost innocent, like sharing warmth. The sweatshirt makes her smell even more like Dean, but Sam’s too tired to think about it, so he just basks in it, this closeness, and he’s not sure whether he feels closer to Jen or Dean or both.

“This is such a potential disaster,” Jen says, low, almost scared now, and Sam wants to kiss her to appease her, but he feels like a kid again, and she sounds so very grown up.

He curls his fingers in her sweatshirt, and goes to sleep. When he wakes up, she’s kissing Dean goodbye in the doorway, but she smiles at him, whishes him a good day. She calls him Sammy, because Dean does, but he doesn’t mind it as much.

They only sleep together four more times, all of them in the darkness and trying to keep quiet, listening closely to every single sound Dean makes. Somehow, it feels like Dean’s the third party in this mess, like he’s in the room with them, breathing on their necks, and if anything, it just makes Sam harder. They still talk, only now it’s pillow talk, heads together as she worries she won’t get her loan and he worries he won’t ever be able to walk out of the life his father has designed for him.

Then they move away, and Dean catches them kissing goodbye in the bathroom while Dad is waiting downstairs by the cars. Dean closes the door and walks out of the apartment, all without saying a word, and Jen looks distressed but it’s not like she’s ever going to see either one of them again, Sam knows she can feel it, so she just kisses Sam again, softly, on the lips, and tells him to write. Then she goes out too, Sam just behind her, and when she tries to call Dean he just slips into the car and stares ahead. Their father looks confused, but doesn’t question them. Jen sighs and starts walking home.

They pass by her on the other side of town, and she chases after the car for a bit, waving and smiling. That’s the image Sam keeps of her, orange hair flying behind her halfway in and halfway out of a ponytail, thin skirt getting tangled between her legs even though the weather is still cold. He smiles back, just as Dean steps on the gas without another word, frown in place.

Dean doesn’t talk to him for two weeks, but after that, and after he realizes Sam sends her postcards from every seedy tourist trap they pass by, he has to agree he’s sort of proud, even if still pissed as fuck.

“I didn’t get to sleep with an older girl until I was seventeen,” he finally says, and it sounds somewhat awed and irritated and maybe, with the right inflection, a bit jealous.

 

\----

 

The first time Sam drives the car without anyone telling him to slow the fuck down or watch for the potholes, his brother is bleeding in the backseat, eyes lidded but locked with Sam’s in the rearview mirror. Sam’s heart is beating so hard it feels like it might burst, the same way Dean’s insides want to slip out through his fingers.

Dad stays behind to finish the job, bloody and pale but still no-nonsense when he presses the keys into Sam’s free hand, the one that isn’t clutching at Dean’s shirt.

The drive to the closest hospital drags on forever, in Sam’s mind, and when he finally parks in the no parking zone in front of the ER, Dean has already passed out. Sam can barely open the door, his hands shaky and wet with sweat and blood. When he manages to open it and goes around the car, he crawls into the backseat, calls Dean’s name over and over again, as if it would make a difference.

He shakes Dean, paws at his face until he wakes up, _Fuck. Fuck, Dean. Stay with me, okay, man? Don’t you dare leave me, Dean. Dean, stay awake. Dean._ It comes out like a chant, a prayer. Dean nods, weakly, and Sam finally cries for help.

He stays outside the OR during the four hours Dean’s surgery lasts, looking ahead at the white wall, ignoring the way he’s so scared he can hardly breathe. There’s dried blood - _Dean’s_ blood – beneath his fingernails; he has dirt streaked all over his face, his shirt is torn and he has a nasty gash on his eyebrow. It stings when he blinks.

The nurses coo at him, offer him water and clean scrubs to wear and offer to hold his hand. _I’m not fucking nine years old, okay?_ he says, and then he’s left alone.

When Dean finally gets out, there are too many tubes coming out of him, but Sam’s knees almost give out when the doctors say he’ll be fine.

The moment they’re left alone, Sam climbs into Dean’s bed awkwardly, trying not to crush anything important, and buries his nose against Dean’s neck. Dean is still out, but he’s breathing, and that’s enough for Sam.

Sam talks to him, just whispers against Dean’s skin, random comments about how Dean would so want to bang his nurse and how ridiculous he looks in a hospital gown. It’s that or going crazy, so he keeps talking. The bed is too small. Sam doesn’t want to put any weight on Dean and it’s uncomfortable, trying to twist himself around his brother, but he doesn’t move, and eventually falls asleep, lulled by the steady beeping of the heart monitor.

His cell phone wakes him up, and his father sounds just as tired and terrified as Sam feels. Sam’s not feeling sympathetic, though, so he just gives him the basics before hanging up.

When Dean finally regains consciousness, Sam is still clinging to him, and he says, “Dude, stop cuddling me in my sleep,” foggy and hazy, and Sam mouths _Thank God,_ against Dean’s pillow.

When Dad finally gets there, Dean is already flirting with the staff to get an extra thing of Jell-O.

The official story is that they were attacked by a bear, and that Dean Stewards, the brave teenaged hero, had tried to protect his little brother. That part is true, at least.

Dad smiles at an elderly nurse as he’s signing the release form, tells her that yes, ma’am, they’ll be sure stay away from wildlife from now on.

Sam grits his teeth, tastes bile in the back of his throat, and hates his father and the lives he makes them lead like he never has before.

 

\----

 

Only a week after surgery Dean’s already up and trying to run a mile a day. He almost passes out from the pain less than a quarter mile away from the house. Sam has to drag him home bodily. He pulls all of his stitches, and when Sam changes the wound dressing, the bandages come away bloody.

A month later Dean is back on his feet and trying to fuck his way through the female population of Andersonville, Georgia. He’s not allowed on hunts yet by medical orders (well, he’s not allowed to do any strenuous activity, but the Winchesters adapt the world to them instead of the other way around), and he’s nearly out of his mind with frustration.

It’s summer already, and Dean entertains himself by tinkering with the Impala, sweaty and greasy under the midday sun and when Sam catches him at it, he can feel his mouth go dry and his stomach twist.

Dean tries teaching Sam, but Sam lies on the porch’s wooden planks instead, watching the ceiling idly and catching glimpses of Dean’s hands under the hood and the still healing scar on his belly.

They arrived in town two weeks before the school year ended, and Sam doesn’t really know anyone, so he spends most of his time at home, dying of boredom and the heat that makes his shirt cling to his skin and his hair stick to his forehead.

Dad spends most of his time hunting, leaves them for weeks and avoids them when he’s home. Sam has the suspicion he finds it hard to look Dean in the eye. And if he doesn’t, he should.

Dean has been twenty-one for six months now, but he still gets a thrill out of using his real ID in bars. Sam doesn’t get it, because he’s been using fake IDs since he was sixteen, and they’re both moody and pissed off at the world in general so he mentions it just to rile Dean up, get a reaction out of him that almost always ends with them fighting, sparring in the living room and, in one memorable occasion, attacking each other with spatulas.

After, once they’re counting their bruises, they feel better, can finally look each other in the eye and not feel like committing fratricide. Then Dean goes out to the nearest bar, and the cycle starts again.

Sam comes with, sometimes. He doesn’t like it much, though. He’s still too skinny, gangly and all elbows, but he’s pushing 6’3 now, and he’s stronger than he looks. He’ll get a drink, easy, no matter how much Dean likes to mock him and his teenage awkwardness, but he invariably ends up sitting in a corner watching Dean flirt, and there’s still enough of an annoying little brother in him to want Dean to only pay attention to him.

Mostly, Dean just comes home smelling like girl and sex and beer. He’s home early, because ‘Sam is not left alone’ could very well be the family motto, and if Dean’s anything, he’s his father’s little soldier. They each have their own room this time around, but Sam can still hear when Dean gets home, because he tends to trip in the darkness over the chair Sam leaves in front of the door on purpose. _Fuck,_ Dean gasps, quiet and breathy, from the floor if he’s drunk enough, and Sam smiles in his bed, takes pleasure in his petty revenge.

Dad takes Sam on a hunt in the first days of July, and Dean raises his voice at the man for the first time since Sam can remember. Sam’s not sure whether he’s angrier at his father for only talking to him when he’s useful or at Dean and his unspoken fear of Sam stealing his place in the family.

“Don’t worry, Dean, I’m not planning on taking your place as Dad’s mindless minion,” Sam says, aiming to hurt, and the way Dean goes quiet lets him know he succeeded.

“Screw you,” Dean says, and then he throws the shotgun he’s holding on the table, leaves the room and that’s the end of his little campaign to keep Sam out of harm’s way.

Only Dad and him alone in the car two hours after leaving and he already misses Dean’s presence physically. Silence stretches between them, and on the off-chance they do speak, it all just ends in fighting. He’d never realized how much they both needed Dean mediating between them.

Two days later, when they finally come home, Dean is smoking anxiously, something he hasn’t done since he was fourteen and trying to look cool, and he looks like he hasn’t slept at all since they left. It’s early afternoon, and the house smells stale, too many days of closed windows.

“Fucking finally,” he mutters when they get in the door, and their father just says a weak _Language, son,_ before heading to bed, completely exhausted.

Sam lets himself fall into the chair opposite Dean’s, lets out a long sigh and takes Dean’s cigarette from his hand, takes a drag and nearly coughs up a lung. He puts it out in the empty beer can by Dean’s side. There’s already five cigarette butts in there.

“Your breath smells like shit,” Sam finally says, after five minutes of silence. He has a cut on his forehead, and he can feel blood trickle down his face, but doesn’t do anything about it.

“I know,” Dean says.

“Don’t smoke.”

“Okay.”

Dean stands up, takes Sam’s wrist and drags him to the bathroom, makes him sit on the edge of the bathtub while Dean rummages around for the first aid kit. Sam sits still and lets himself be handled, hands in his lap.

He hisses when Dean applies antiseptic, smiles a bit when Dean says _You big baby_. He only needs a butterfly bandage.

The bathroom walls are unnaturally white, the heirloom of a particularly neat previous tenant, Sam guesses. They remind him of Dean in that hospital bed, surrounded by white. Dean sits next to him, and they stay like that for a long while, companionable silence and sharing warmth.

“I hate this, I really fucking do,” Sam says, and Dean says “I know, Sammy, I know.”

When they finally leave the room, it’s dark outside.

 

\----

Sam slips into Dean’s bed, sometimes, almost feeling like a child again. He puts his hand under Dean’s shirt, feels the pink scar on his belly, feels Dean wake up under his hands and swear quietly, startled.

“Jesus, Sam. I’m fine, all right? Just go to bed already,” he says, sleepy, and Sam nods but doesn’t move.

After a while, Dean just sighs, scoots over and makes room for him. Sam usually goes to sleep with his thumb still pressed against Dean’s scar, going over it over and over again almost as if he wished to erase it. It’s too hot to share a bed, but they do it anyway, wake up sticky and sweaty. Dean sleeps deeper when Sam’s next to him, always has – Sam knows he hates sleeping in separate rooms, hates not knowing exactly where Sam is.

The fifth time Sam climbs into bed with Dean since he got out of the hospital, he whispers, “I’m sorry,” with his fingers against Dean’s scar.

Dean is almost asleep when he mumbles, _What for? You got nothing to apologize for, Sammy,”_ and Sam clenches his jaw because he knows _he_ doesn’t, but life sure fucking does, and he’s sick of this existence where they’re always a step away from dying, a never ending cycle.

He can only see Dean’s outline in the darkness, a single line of light that filters through the cheap curtains. He lifts himself to his elbows, watches Dean’s face, eyes half closed and looking at him with curiosity, mouth open slightly and a constellation of freckles that stand out even in the dark. Just a month ago they had both been covered in Dean’s blood.

He leans down, presses his mouth to Dean’s, hard, because he’s not used to doing things halfway, and his stomach flutters. He takes Dean’s lower lip between his own, pulls slightly and Dean gasps for a second before he’s pushing Sam away, rolling out of bed and walking out of the room without looking back.

Sam rolls onto his back, puts his forearm over his eyes, cheeks burning. He wants to scream. He eventually falls asleep, and when he wakes up he’s still in Dean’s bed, wrapped in Dean’s sheets and Dean’s scent.

Dean sleeps on the couch, and in the morning Sam kicks the back of it, vindictively, lingers only long enough to listen to Dean’s sound of surprise before closing the door hard enough to make it rattle and heading downtown.

Once he’s there, he realizes he’s got nothing to do. He buys a party size bag of peanut M&Ms, eats all of the green ones first, Dean’s favorite. He lies on a bench in a park and looks at the slices of sky in between branches and leaves, tries not to remember the feeling of Dean beneath him. He fails.

When he finally walks the five miles back home, he finds Dean shooting cans in the backyard. Dean hands him a shotgun silently, and they spend the rest of the evening shooting and not talking to each other.

Dad notices, remarks on how they shouldn’t quarrel, but he’s too caught up in research for the next hunt, doesn’t really say much otherwise. Dean still says “Yes, sir,” stiff and obedient and Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head but bites back the _You’re so whipped_ he desperately wants to say. He wants to hurt Dean in that moment, almost aches for it.

Two days later, Dean presses him against the kitchen counter just after breakfast, puts his hands on both sides of Sam’s hips and comes so close their breaths mingle. He stops an inch away from Sam’s face and just looks at him. Sam is so confused by the sudden movement that it takes a moment for him to realize that Dean is letting him take the initiative – probably _needs_ him to. By the time he leans down Dean is already leaning up, surging up to meet him halfway, mouth already open.

Dean tastes like Cheerios. It’s that little detail that makes it real, that makes him gasp and put his arms around Dean’s neck, pulling him forward, and it’s awkward, because he’s taller than Dean, but Dean’s tongue is in his mouth so he doesn’t care all that much. One of Dean’s hands is on his face, thumb on his jaw, and the other one is clenched in the fabric of his shirt by his hip.

When Sam pulls back slightly, says Dean’s name and adds a question mark to it, Dean kisses him again, almost desperate, and Sam gets the hint. They try moving in two directions at the same time, and they stumble to the floor, still tangled together. They laugh, and kiss, and breathe together.

They don’t mention it, later. It’s better, in a way, their own little secret in their own little world; their father away for weeks and complete freedom for them, miles of flat ground around them, no shade and not a cloud in the sky.

Summer is only starting, white washed and with too much light, drought that murders grass and has dogs panting in the shade, tongues out. They buy popsicles, sit on the Impala’s hood at dusk and stick out their blue or red or purple tongues at each other. It tastes sweet, like July belongs to them.

It feels comfortable, well-worn, this thing between them, and in retrospect, Sam guesses it was a long time coming.

 

\----

 

Once they start, they can’t seem to stop.

They take to doing laundry at midnight, preferably in a motel’s dingy, little laundry room with halogen lights that make them look slightly green and sick. They laugh together, throw socks at each other’s heads. Dean sits on the working washing machine, and when Sam slips between his legs and kisses him, both of them still laughing, they’re the same height.

They first time they come pressed against each other, kissing messily so they won’t make too much noise, he nearly chokes on the way he has Dean’s name stuck in his throat, the way he wants to say it over and over like a chant. He doesn’t, though, just goes to sleep with his cold feet on Dean’s calves.

Sam drags Dean into a diner’s bathroom while they’re on the road, blows him against a bathroom stall and goes back to the table where his father is waiting. He can still taste Dean on his tongue. Dean spends the rest of the meal looking dazed and flushing every time Sam’s knees brush against his. Sam feels alive, blood rushing and a smile that won’t go away.

Dean gets back at him two weeks later with a handjob in the janitor’s closet at Sam’s high school. Afterwards, Dean walks out, mouth too red, and swaggers out the door like he owns the place. Some girls whisper as he passes by, wonder who he is and it feels like freshman year all over again, Dean a senior and every girl’s wet dream. Sam was no one but Dean Winchester’s kid brother for years, and there’s still a pang of bitterness, even if Dean was panting against his neck only ten minutes ago.

This thing between them, it’s just the same as everything else they’ve ever done; still a competition, still trying to outdo the other one.

It’s just that the stakes have gone up.

 

\----

 

Half a year later and it almost feels as if nothing at all has changed.

Sam has two new scars. Dean has four.

 

\----

 

Dean is watching TV when Sam comes home from school, his day off from the record store he’s working in this month. Dean likes it there because he’s allowed to blast Led Zeppelin all day long, and the manager likes him because he’s never had so many custumers, especially of the female variety.

Sam flops onto the couch beside him, his backpack abandoned at his feet. Dean grunts in hello, but doesn’t really acknowledge him otherwise. Sam sinks down into the couch, thinks about getting up for an aspirin but is too lazy to actually do it.

Dean changes the channel every three point five seconds. “You know,” Sam says, “no matter how many times you go through every single stupid channel in existence, you won’t be finding free porn, dude.”

“You never know, Sammy, there might always be a miracle,” Dean says, still flicking, and then, all of the sudden, there are bare tits on the screen.

“Holy _shit,_ ” Sam says, mouth wide open, and Dean lets out a happy whoop.

“See? What did I tell you, you just have to have _faith_ , Sam.”

“In what, the power of porn?” There’s a blonde girl with a strap-on fucking a brunette on TV.

“You got it, dude.”

The scene changes, and a girl starts giving this faceless guy a blowjob. “And hey, you might even get some new tips, Sammy, you know, improve your technique,” Dean says, smile crooked.

“Oh, fuck off,” Sam says, and Dean laughs, head thrown back.

Sam shoves him, and then reaches up and kisses him, and he can still feel Dean laughing against his mouth. He pushes Dean until he’s flat on his back, Sam halfway on top of him and with a leg dangling off the couch. Dean bites at his lips, gets his hands inside Sam’s shirt and settles them on his hips. There are grunts coming from the television still, mixing with their own, as they move against each other.

Later, when their father comes home, Sam’s curled up in a chair reading, and Dean is making spaghetti. They fight over the last vanilla pudding in the fridge, and Dean kicks Sam in the shin when he looses. It’s not like it’s Sam’s fault Dean always picks scissors. Dad says _Boys_ , quietly, and they immediately stop their fight under the table. Sam ‘mmm’s and ‘ah’s a bit too much around his spoon, closes his eyes and says loudly how the pudding is so damn good. Dean just glares.

It’s such a normal picture, the three of them sitting down for dinner together, talking about their day, but Sam can still smell Dean on his hands, and the way he gets a kick out of it terrifies him.

 

\----

 

Dean finds Sam’s SATs manual. He slams it on the table where Sam is making himself a sandwich and they both stare at each other for a long time, silent. Eventually, Dean goes into the living room to start the weekly weapon cleaning, and Sam finishes spreading peanut butter on his bread.

After dinner, Dean says, “Just, don’t keep secrets from me, all right?” and Sam nods, and that’s the end of it.

They don’t mention it again, but Sam starts doing mock tests on the kitchen table, in the open, and Dean even times him sometimes. Sam clings to whatever encouragement he gets, because he knows Dean thinks this is a phase, something he has to prove to himself and get out of his system before fully embracing the Winchester way of fucked up life, and nothing more.

In the end, Sam has never been able to keep his promises.

 

\----

 

Dean still sleeps with girls. _Sam_ still sleeps with girls, whenever he gets the chance to actually know one enough to like her. He can’t seem to disassociate sex with affection, no matter how much he tries. There’s Lucy in Oklahoma (blonde braids and hot mouth and a liking for kung foo movies) and Stephanie in Washington (too much eyeliner and all clever hands and a tendency to bite her pencils as she solves equations). He’s not sure how many for Dean, and he doesn’t want to know.

There’s also David in Idaho (blinding smile and wicked mind and obsessed with NASA launches), and it’s a bit mind blowing, but Sam has to bite down on the D of his name so he won’t call him something else.

It’s not such a big thing, playing footsie under the table one minute and then kicking each other in the shin the next – it’s just another part of _them_ , together, as easy and effortless as breathing.

It keeps Sam centered, this nameless thing, keeps him from just taking the next bus out of town, out of Dad’s obsession, out of this life.

 

\----

 

Dean picks him up from school on a Thursday, all leather and smiles for the pretty girls that walk past him, and when Sam finally gets into the car he just says they could use a holiday. They’ve been on hunting weekends four weeks in a row, so Sam can’t help but agree.

They go to the movies, pick a really stupid one and then throw popcorn at the screen every time the monster on a killing spree looks fake, which is a lot. They make out for a while until the old lady sitting behind them walks out, scandalized, and then they laugh and bitch some more about the movie, loudly.

Sam gets Dean off, right as the thing on screen is chasing the girl through the woods, and Dean throws his head back and pants right into Sam’s open mouth. Sam’s hand is still greasy from the popcorn.

Twenty-four hours later they’re the ones running through the woods, being chased by a monster. They’re bait, and Sam hates the way Dean will throw himself right into it, trust blindly that their father will get them through it, no questions asked, and the way he’ll even be flippant about it later. Sam trusts his brother with his life, but his father is another story.

Twenty minutes of running and Sam’s already wheezing, panting with exertion as he struggles to keep himself from stumbling. He’s already gotten three deep scratches on his face from low branches, and even while running he feels frozen down to his bones – it’s January in Colorado, and, more than winter, it feels like a new ice age. The black dog at his back roars as it goes after them, throws trees down and makes the earth rumble. It makes the hair on the back of Sam’s neck stand on end.

“Fuck it,” Sam says when he can no longer feel his toes. He whirls around and aims his shotgun at the darkness between the trees, sick of the waiting for their father to appear.

“What the - Sammy, what the fuck are you doing?” Dean says in a whisper when he finally realizes Sam’s not running anymore, but then the Black Dog is jumping straight at Sam, and Dean’s not close enough to drag him back.

Sam doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even blink, and when he shoots at the beast mid-jump he still gets it right in the heart. The black dog yelps in pain, and its momentum carries it forward, brings Sam down and crushes him against the cold ground, three hundred pounds of dead weight on his chest.

Dean runs toward him, calling his name, and when he finally manages to roll the thing off of him, he shoots at it once more for good measure. Sam coughs, tries to get his breath back as Dean paws at his face, making sure he’s not injured.

“You fucking moron!” Dean says finally. He lowers his hands to Sam’s shoulders, shakes him until Sam feels dizzy. “Jesus, Sam, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“I’m _cold,_ ” Sam says in answer, and he’s vaguely aware of how childish he sounds. Dean sighs, rests his forehead on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam can feel him tremble with fear. “I wasn’t thinking, okay? Sorry.”

Dean pushes him away, stands up and drags Sam up as well, face set in a frown. “There’s a reason we don’t do this gig alone, Sam, and you better get that into your thick head before your stupidity kills one of us, got it?” He practically spits, and then he walks away, kicks at the black dog’s carcass just once and starts readying him for the salt and burn. Sam just stares at Dean, eyes wide.

He knows he did right, feels it in his very bones, but there’s still something of the six-year-old in him, the one that wanted his brother’s approval beyond anything else, and Dean’s back to him makes him hurt, makes him angry, makes him terrified, and makes him think that he can’t feel all of this, that he’s about to explode. Instead, he takes the matches from Dean’s cold hands, lights the body himself and watches it burn as Dean calls Dad, lets him know the hunt’s over.

His father yelling at him back in the motel doesn’t sting nearly as much as Dean’s quiet disapproval does, and that night in bed he searches Dean’s mouth out in the darkness, desperate, kisses him not caring their father is asleep in the other bed, doesn’t stop until Dean yields and kisses him back, almost like forgiveness.

It makes him feel sick to his stomach, knowing just how much he needs Dean’s approval.

 

\----

 

The day he gets his acceptance letter from Stanford he looks under the Impala’s backseat until he finds the cheap whiskey Dean keeps there in case of an emergency.

He gets drunk by himself next to a little stream on the other side of town, jean cuffs rolled up to his calves and his feet underwater. He keeps the letter in his shirt pocket, feels the paper rustle every time he moves. It’s March already, and the air smells crisp, fresh and clean. It doesn’t suit his mood.

Dean finds him three hours later, just like he always does.

“A bit early to be angsting, don’t you think?” says Dean as he nudges Sam lightly in the kidney with the tip of his boot.

It’s too hot for jackets, but Dean’s still wearing his favorite leather one anyway. He has his hands in his pockets, and when Sam looks up at him the sun is right behind his head, making his features look sharp in the high contrast. Sam squints until his eyes tear up.

“You’re supposed to be in school,” Dean says as he sits next to Sam. He snatches the almost empty bottle from Sam’s hands and takes a swig.

“I know,” Sam says. He’s supposed to be in Calculus. He doesn’t exactly feel sorry about it, not this time.

“So, what’s up?” asks Dean, trying not to let it show he’s worried. Sam rolls his eyes.

“Nothing. Just… nothing, Dean.” Sam sighs, presses the heel of his hand against his forehead. He can feel the letter digging into his chest. He tries to take the bottle back from Dean, but Dean pushes him away and Sam’s so drunk that he just falls sideways, ungracefully. Dean laughs as Sam mutters _ouch._

“You ever wanted a different life? You know, a proper house, no hunting, no fucking target practice and drills?” Sam asks a while later, once he’s sobered up a bit. _Come with me,_ he wants to say. He just can’t find the words.

“Why would I?” Dean says, and Sam knows he’s being honest. “There are downsides, yeah, but the job’s good, thrilling, and we get to help people.” He shrugs. “Besides, road diner waitresses are one of my favorite things in the world, you know that,” he finishes with a smile to lighten the mood, and Sam can feel his stomach clench.

That is the moment Sam first realizes Dean is his own person and not just an extension of himself. It breaks his heart a little, realizing he can’t just make Dean follow him.

Dean takes him back home on piggyback because he’s _strong enough, damnit,_ no matter that Sam is three inches taller than him and that he’s perfectly able to walk home on his own. For the most part. Only swaying a little.

Sam presses his face to his brother’s back, feels Dean’s muscles working beneath him. He allows himself to cling a bit, just this once. They don’t talk on the way back, Dean trying not to let it show that Sam’s weight puts a strain on him and Sam soaking in Dean’s presence. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s still five and happy, and an avid worshipper of his big brother and ignorant about the things that hide in the dark.

Dean never knows it, but that’s the day Sam decides to leave.

 

\----

After, there’s a certain bite to their sparring, a coldness that wasn’t there, and it’s like Dean can already feel Sam slipping away.

Sam hates it, because there’s a ticking clock on the time they have left together, and he’s enough of a sap to want it to be good, memorable. Instead, they fight all the time; silly, stupid fights that amount to nothing but angry sex and cold, silent afterglows.

He climbs into bed with Dean in March, on the border between Arkansas and Louisiana and enough metaphorical ghosts to overshadow the real ones. Dean startles awake and nearly throws Sam to the floor.

 _Let me,_ Sam says, low against Dean’s ear, and Dean’s already breathing hard.

They move together, sticky and clammy and hot against each other, blood flowing and Dean biting at Sam’s neck, Sam fucking Dean into the mattress with short, desperate thrusts. They bite at each other’s lips to keep silent, but Sam can’t help the _DeanDeanDean_ that spills out of his mouth as Dean holds his head in place, fingers buried in his hair.

When they come, foreheads together, half kissing and half just breathing together, Dean’s heartbeat is beneath Sam’s palm, and he counts the beats through his orgasm, commits it to memory.

They kiss again, after, so they won’t have to talk, and Sam has never felt closer to Dean in his life.

 

\----

 

Sam remembers winters in Pastor Jim’s house, playing in the snow and making snow angels but never calling them that because even at age ten Dean had issues. He remembers Spring Breaks at Bobby’s, conjugating Latin until the words mixed with everyday speech. Remembers swimming in the Pacific for the first time and sunrises in the Atlantic and Dad quizzing him for a history test while driving towards a hunt.

He remembers thunderstorms in Florida and sharing an umbrella with Dean, remembers carnivals and cotton candy and his father laughing and telling him not to worry, that he wouldn’t let the clowns hurt him. Remembers having a crush on his teacher when he was eight and giving her a dandelion, blushing like mad. Remembers late night Star Wars marathons and more recently, kissing Dean’s trembling mouth and pressing him against a tree in Oregon, cloudy sky and ozone in the air.

When he was four, he decided he wanted to be an astronaut. He built a spaceship out of cardboard boxes and insisted on Dean dressing up as the evil alien he had to destroy. Dean rolled his eyes a lot but went along with it, and Dad even managed to get him an old motorcycle helmet for him to decorate with tinfoil.

When he was six, he decided he wanted to be Dean.

When he was sixteen, he decided he wanted Dean, and to be someone else.

It makes it worse, somehow, knowing there’s been good times and laughter and joy. Then he remembers the sleepless nights waiting for his family to return bleeding from a hunt, remembers the fear and the hunger and the pain and the blood and his father’s never ending obsession and his brother’s passiveness and his resolve strengthens.

He mostly tries to keep himself from thinking.

 

\----

 

They exorcize a demon in April, only the third one Sam’s seen in his life. The thing laughs, head thrown back, even when it’s trapped in a circle of salt. It focuses on Sam alone.

“Sam Winchester,” it drawls, low and dangerous. Its lips are bloody, red dripping into a white shirt, and the effect is chilling. “We’re all keeping tabs on you down there – we have high hopes for you.”

There’s a stunned moment of silence, and then Dad is taking the exorcism book out of Sam’s hands and racing through the Latin, jaw clenched tight. The demon gives a last laugh in between howls of pain, and then there’s just dark smoke slipping through the cracks in the ceiling, ominously.

Sam can feel both his father and Dean looking sharply at him, and he busies himself with helping the traumatized kid inside the salt circle so he won’t have to look at them. The demon’s words still ring in his ears.

None of them quite know what to make of it.

 

\----

 

Dean gets him drunk for his eighteen birthday. He insists on the three of them all going to a bar for a celebratory drink, as they’re driving back home from a hunt, still high on adrenaline and fear and triumph.

They play pool for a while, not hustling but just for the sake of it, and they’ve both almost forgotten how to play without a strategy. Dad pays for a round of shots, and they both toast Sam, who almost blushes.

“Almost an adult now, Sammy, but you’ll always be that ugly baby to me,” Dean says.

“Yeah, and I’m still much more mature than you’ll ever be, jackass.”

Dad wants to call it a night after a short while, claims it’s too late already, but Sam’s feeling good, relaxed in a way he hasn’t felt since he first mailed all those college applications no one else knows about, and he wants to stay. Dean stays with him, because it’s what he always does, and two hours later they’re both so sloshed they have trouble standing up right.

They’re still playing pool, much to the amusement of the locals, who have enjoyed the suckfest thoroughly and vocally. _S’not like that, Sammy,_ Dean says when Sam somehow manages to just poke the table with his cue, and he leans over him, puts his hands in the right position. His breath tickles the back of Sam’s neck, and when he shudders he knows Dean can feel it.

Dean drags him out of the bar, pushes him against a brick wall and kisses him, shoulders hunched and both hands on Sam’s face. Sam clings to Dean’s shirt, hooks an ankle around Dean’s leg and grinds down, smiles at the way Dean’s breath catches. Dean tastes like alcohol and almost nothing else, too overpowering, but Sam’s aware he must taste the same, so he doesn’t mention it.

Alcohol makes them reckless, makes them brash and makes them forget they’re not living in a world made out of only the two of them, that anyone could catch them at any moment. But Sam’s not jailbait anymore, and it’s such a rush, getting closer, closer, closer until they can hardly distinguish who’s who.

Dean puts a hand down Sam’s pants, jerks him off until he’s coming in Dean’s hand with his mouth covered by Dean’s. When Dean comes, Sam cupping him through his pants, his lips shape a word that could easily be Sam’s name, but he doesn’t make a sound. After, when they’re still struggling to get their breath back, Dean puts their foreheads together, thumbs on Sam’s jaw.

“You and me, Sammy, you and me,” he says, fervently, and Sam _believes_ him, knows he means it down to his bones.

Sam kisses him so he doesn’t have to say anything, and he convinces himself that it’s not the same as lying.

 

\----

 

Sam leaves only two months later.

Dean drives him to the bus stop, both of them silent. Sam has a black eye, Dean’s quiet _fuck you_ when he followed him out of the house with Dad’s _And don’t you come back,_ still ringing in his ears.

They’re both sporting bloody lips, Dean’s from Sam’s fist when he hit back and Sam’s from Dean’s teeth when he kissed him so hard it was more pain than pleasure and the sum of every single moment between them.

They sit there for half an hour as they wait for Sam’s bus to arrive. The windows are rolled down, but the air feels oppressive, and Sam can hardly breathe. He can feel sweat pooling on his lower back.

Sam says he’s not leaving _him_. Dean says that it sure looks that way. The fight is already old and worn out, and it dies after a few minutes. Dean calls Sam ‘Sammy’. Sam hates the nickname, has ever since he was eight, but he still basks in it, the familiar word out of his brother’s lips. He has a feeling he won’t be hearing it again for a while.

Sam tries to kiss Dean, drag him close, but Dean pushes him away, snarl on his face, and they go back to staring out their windows. When the bus finally arrives, they both get out of the car and sit on the hood, for a moment, shoulders pressed together although they’re both so furious at each other they’re a step away from coming to blows again. Dean slips a small knife with a protective symbol sketched on the handle into Sam’s pocket, eyes looking ahead. The meaning is obvious, _stay safe._

“Screw you, Sam,” Dean says, then, meaning it, and this time when he turns around Sam does kiss him, just a quick press of mouths, and Dean pulls him closer with his fists around Sam’s shirt lapels before pushing him away so hard Sam almost stumbles.

“Goodbye, Dean,” Sam says with a hand against his bruised mouth. He picks his bag up from where he left it on the ground and walks toward the bus. Dean stays silent.

Sam doesn’t look back as the bus leaves the station, but not even a week later he already wishes he had.  



End file.
